New Files Tie U.S. to Deaths of Latin
Leftists in 1970's. By
DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

WASHINGTON, March 5 - A recently
declassified State Department document shows that Latin American
officers involved in Operation Condor, the joint effort in the 1970's
by right-wing governments to crush left-wing opposition, used an
American communications installation to share
intelligence.

A cable to the State Department in 1978 from
the United States ambassador to Paraguay at the time, Robert E.
White, quoted the chief of staff to the dictator Alfredo Stroessner
as saying an American installation in the Canal Zone was "employed to
coordinate intelligence information" among South America countries.
"Obviously," the cable said, "this is the Condor network, which all
of us have heard about over the last few years."

Mr. White wrote that he had not
independently confirmed the accuracy of the Paraguayan's report. But
he recommended that Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance "review this
arrangement to insure that its continuation is in the U.S. interest."

To Mr. White's knowledge, he said recently,
the review was never done.

But the cable appeared to open new avenues
of inquiry about the American role in Condor, a shadowy operation to
stamp out the Latin American left that, among other things,
dispatched death squads to kill critics at home and
overseas.

Documents already made public have shown
that the F.B.I. helped Condor's efforts early on by investigating
South American leftists who were arrested and, in at least one case,
tortured.

The cable was discovered by a Long Island
University professor, Patrice McSherry, among thousands of documents
being declassified on American relations with South American
dictatorships.

If Latin American officers did use American
facilities to transmit intelligence, this would have provided United
States officials the opportunity to monitor Condor activities
closely.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Wilson, retired, who was
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency through August 1977,
said, "If such an arrangement existed on an institutional basis, I
would have known about it, and I did not then and do not
now."

However, he added, "that such an arrangement
could have been made locally on an ad hoc basis is not beyond the
realm of probability."

But Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the
National Security Archive, said the cable implied "foreknowledge,
cooperation and total access" to the plans and operations of Condor.

"The degree to which the U.S.A. knew about
and supported these operations has remained secret until now," he
said. "The layers of the onion are peeling away here."

Officially, Condor arose as a defense
against Communist-inspired terrorism, but its victims included
government officials ousted in United States-supported military
coups, trade unionists, rights advocates and suspected socialists. By
1978 investigators were tying Condor to the killing of Orlando
Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister, and Ronni Moffitt, an
American colleague, in 1976 when the car in which they were riding
exploded in Washington.

In his cable, Ambassador White recounted a
meeting with a Paraguayan general, Alejandro Fretes Davalos, shortly
after a Chilean official visited Paraguay to discuss the Letelier
case. Mr. White surmised that in telling him American channels were
being used to transmit intelligence for Condor, the generals hoped to
fend off questions from the United States Justice Department about
their role in the killings.

The cable said Condor nations "keep in touch
with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the
Panama Canal zone, which covers all of Latin America."

"This U.S. communications facility is used
mainly by student officers to call home to Latin America," the cable
continued, "but it is also employed to coordinate intelligence
information among the Southern Cone countries. They maintain the
confidentiality of their communication through the U.S. facility in
Panama by using bilateral codes."

Mr. White, who currently runs the Center for
International Policy, a research organization, sent his message
directly to Secretary Vance in recognition of its sensitivity and his
recommendation. In a recent interview, however, he said he had
received no response: "Nobody reacted in any way, shape or form."

"What it suggests to me is that people in
the U.S. government really actively worked not to have this
knowledge, this evidence, in play," he said. "There are thousands of
telegrams that come in each day. It's very easy to just drop one down
that big memory hole."